Canon 430EX II Flash, experiences and sample photos
Sunday, February 15th, 2009I'm really getting into photography lately, and finally got myself another accessory, which many people consider one of a must-have things - an external flash.
The one I got is Canon Speedlite 430EX II, and I have also got an Off-camera Shoe Cord (OC-3E) for situations when having flash mounted on top of the camera is not very good (think outside photos where you don't have any walls to bounce off, and still want to have some non-flat-looking images).
So that's how flash module looks mounted on the camera. The camera suddenly became pretty heavy :) But yeah, that's the price you have to pay.. Near the camera is the off-camera shoe cord.
Having knowing near nothing about flashes, how they work and how once is supposed to shoot with them, I found a very good article describing how speedlites actually work. You should definitely give it a try at this link.
And as it was said in one of flash training videos I have (one from Blue Crane studio - google it up) - I moved out to make my first set batteries go dead over some flash testing. I share some of my findings below. So even if you don't have an external flash, these images will probably help you in making decision of wether you should get one :)
External flashes are basically your portable suns, you can point them at target directly, you can make the light bounce of walls and ceilings, you can fight with very bright backgrounds and still take great photos with shallow depth of field, by using hi-speed sync, and much more! I go into bouncing and hi-speed think with this blog entry. So let have a look at sample photos, with some short comments where applicable.
